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**Chucky Cheese** · 12 October 1999, 22:32

hey dude,

put "pcispy.exe -c" in you autoexec.bat as the first line and see if that helps!

chucky

**merchant2112** · 13 October 1999, 03:04

Mellow_Dude i really hate to tell you this but it sounds like whoever put your system together (some oem i assume)used some really cheap parts. (my uncle has a tiger built system the mother board is so badly made that it gives him nothing but errors hard drive errorrs, vxd, random lockups and system crashes ect . turns out the main board was made by some company that is no longer in bussness. they existed for about a year. now to fix this problem im going to be giveing him a fic pa2013 rev 2 main board i have along with a amd k6-2 350 cpu (when i upgrsde my main system to a step k7 650 cpu and mobo.)

i would recomend trying to get your oem to send you a difrent designed board or just plain buying a replacement that is not from your oem.) hopefully your system is in a standard at/atx case and not a dell or compaq upgrade nightmare.

this is probibly not what you want to hear but some times you just get stuck with a bad pice of equipment. recomended abit, asus, and or one of thoise new soyo 6ab +iv. 8ide devices (just like be6)

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nvida the next generation of hype..... 3dfx so fast its vapor(for now)..... s3 hey they are trying...... bitboys produceing yet another set of chip spec's........ matrox the only company to actully make a next gen card that dose what they claim.

**merchant2112** · 13 October 1999, 03:06

hey im a murcer. what the hell is a murcer????????????????

**motub** · 13 October 1999, 18:20

You, silly...!

------------
Holly, who seems to have been the catalyst for this transformation... here, if you must know...

**The Rock** · 13 October 1999, 20:50

Mellow Dude:

I hope for your sake that those bad sectors are being misreported because of a faulty BIOS. I take Merchant2112's advice and find out exactly what kinda mobo is in that thing and get it replaced with a different brand ASAP. Weird for that kinda problem to persist after all that replacing though. Dumb ass question: could you have caught a real mofo of a virus?

The Rock

**Mellow_Dude** · 14 October 1999, 03:41

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your reply's so far. I can't try anything with the system as I'm out of town on business for a couple more days.

I doubt it is a virus unless the Memory on the G200 Mill card is hiding something as all other memory/storage has been replaced.

The same MBoard works great in the systems of several other people I now although they are using faster PII's and PIII's.

Keep the idea's coming guys, it helps if I have as many ideas as posssible when I go and see the shop I got the system from.

Thanks,

Mellow

**merchant2112** · 14 October 1999, 05:06

ok it may be the cpu type. that mobo may not like the cpu at all. i have read that some mother boards just don't like some cpu's if your buddy's systems all work fine with a difrent cpu with the same mobo as you have try that. (make sure its the same board compare revision and board id numbers (just becuase it looks the same don't mean it is) tiger had 3 diffrent mother boards in one year for the same system. they were useing fic pa2012 when they first came out then they switched to some junk that my uncle got stuck with and now they use something else. even check bios revision numbers. (between your system and the ones that are not haveing problems.)

one thing you can find out who made the board buy writeing down the numbers that pop up at the bottom of your monitor when you boot up (full bios id) and hunting around the www.sysopt.com site for a link to a bios upgrade page where you can find out who made your board and if you can get a bios upgrade eitehr a new chip or flash ware. doing this may help you fix your problem but in the long run i would say it woiuld probibly be easyer and less frustrating to just get a new mobo and if you got the dosh (cash) a faster cpu. you will be happyer. new board good but cheap about 80.00 (bh6 r1.1 comes to mind) and a p2/cellery cpu another 100 to 200.00 for the 366 to 450 range (p3 for the last.)or re use your old p2

just my opinion but something dont like your computer too much. hey stupid question was your system behaving like this before the g200 ???? or after????

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nvida the next generation of hype..... 3dfx so fast its vapor(for now)..... s3 hey they are trying...... bitboys produceing yet another set of chip spec's........ matrox the only company to actully make a next gen card that dose what they claim.

[This message has been edited by merchant2112 (edited 14 October 1999).]

[This message has been edited by merchant2112 (edited 15 October 1999).]

**merchant2112** · 15 October 1999, 03:17

another thought, motub one of our ladys of murc. pointed out the other day something we all seem to have compleetly overlooked lately

HEAT! random errors seem to be associated with over heating.
1)what kind of cooling are you useing?
2) what is the average room temp of where you keep your computer. (internal case temp can be 30 to 40 degrees hoter if you have poor cooling.
3)have you tryed runing your system with the case cover off (so your case runs a little cooler) and see if your problems go away. if they do i would recomend modifying your case to help cooling (extra fan's cuting away grillwork to improve air flow ect.) i don't recomend running your system with the case open for long periods. exspecialy if you have cat's dogs ect. that would just love to find out what the inside of that new open box is like.

hope this helps.

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EVIL IS GOOD. EVIL IS LIVE SPELLED BACKWARD AND WE ALL WANT TO LIVE RIGHT ?
INTEL EVIL INSIDE, INTEL SPYCHIP INSIDE

**Mellow_Dude** · 15 October 1999, 16:47

Thanks for your idea's merchant2112, its all helping!

To answer your questions:

Originally the system came with a shitty Veiwtop I740 video card and I replaced that with the G200. The system ran fine for about 8 months before I started to notice occasional random crashes and this Hard Drive fault. Just seems so Weird that I always end up with 0.26MB bad sectors each time.

My case has 4 fans including the PII's and Power Supply's and the room I use it in quite cool.

What tells the HD to destroy HD sectors ie: Processor or HD controller.

Keep em coming Dudes!

**motub** · 15 October 1999, 17:57

hey guys... what I'm wondering about is that "0.26"mb.... what the heck is that??? always the same size, no matter what.... shouldn't we be looking for a bad driver or TSR or something of that size?? it's got to be something that installs no matter what the HW config... something in Win98 is bad, maybe??

Where did your Win98 CD come from?? maybe it's a bad bootleg or something...?

Just a thought...

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Holly

**Wombat** · 15 October 1999, 20:48

I'm not so concerned about the size. That could just be the standard I/O chunk for something. Having it the same size almost hints at a way to narrow it down. I'm more interested in what files are being corrupted, or what process is running when the corruption occurs.

-Wombat

**motub** · 16 October 1999, 10:03

Sorry, Wombat, I wasn't saying that the size specifically matters either... I was just noticing that despite there being massive changes in HW configuraton over the course of time, this corruption recurs in such a remarkably consistent manner, that it can hardly be a HW problem... (usually HW problems I have change to a related-but-not-exactly-the-same form if I swap parts)...

Unless...please reassure me, Mellow_Dude, that these 3 different HDDs you installed.. you did reinstall Win98 and your apps from scratch, didn't you? Surely [fingers crossed] you didn't just mirror your original drive with either a drive image program or by a direct drive-to-drive copy...

maybe it's time to post a list of 1)the order in which you install order your apps when you're recreating from a new blank HDD... at what point does this error then show up in the process?

and/or 2) what is the startup list both from the Registry and the Startup folder.

Are we sure there's not a boot sector or memory-res virus on this machine??? It sounds awfully like that kind of thing (or that faulty BIOS).. you say, Mellow that all memory/storage has been replaced... but if you reinstalled say, your HDD overlay program, or Win98, or heck, Pretty Good Solitaire from an infected floppy or CD it wouldn't matter how many times you replaced the HDD or RAM...!!!

Sorry it took so long for me to work my way to what I'm really thinking... I think you have a virus on some install media somewhere.

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Holly

**motub** · 16 October 1999, 10:23

I doubt it is a virus unless the Memory on the G200 Mill card is hiding something as all other memory/storage has been replaced.

Hey, get with the program... ! We HW geeks don't think, we check...! I dunno about you guys, but in my box, 80% of the time it's the thing I "don't think it could possibly be [that obscure BIOS setting, a loose cable, that it's not ON ]" that turns out to be the problem...

I hate to suggest this, but you've already suffered so much what's a little more... I think you should (again) reformat one of these HDDs (and check it for errors/viruses at that point) and rebuild your box with NOTHING but the HDD and your G200. Install Windows and see where you stand. Add your HW back piece by piece and see if/when the error shows up... if it doesn't, then start installing SW app by app, scanning for viruses at each step... sigh. Sorry. "It's the only way to be sure."

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Holly

[This message has been edited by motub (edited 16 October 1999).]

**Mellow_Dude** · 16 October 1999, 16:30

Guy's Thanks for all your help so far!

Can anyone tell me why scan disk would bring up the message "CHECKING FOR CROSS LINKED FILES" at about 85% through the scan disk during Win 98 install.

What are "CROSS LINKED FILES" and "WHAT CAUSES THEM"?

I'm starting to think that the HD's could be half the problem.
When the CMOS auto-detects the drive (4.32 Fujitsu) it sets the LBA settings (LZ, SECTORS etc) totally different from what the manufacturer recommends if you manually set it up.

During the win 98 install onto a freshly Fdisked and formatted drive the install needs to re-boot twice (always has).
The second re-boot starts scan-disk due to the system being "incorrectly shutdown". The scan-disk is erratic (10% jumps to 45% then back to 15% then up to 80% etc)

At about 85% a message pops up saying "Checking for cross linked files". Why would it co that on a fresh install of Win 98. It never did that when I first got the system.

Sorry I didn't mention this earlier, I didn't know if it was relevant to the problem.

Thanks for everybodys help!

Keep em coming

Mellow_Dude

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Guys! I need more help and suggestions for this Weird problem!

Guys! I need more help and suggestions for this Weird problem!

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